Over the years, I have written several columns about my annual trip to Uruguay where we go to visit my wife’s family and escape the Iowa winter. Search for “Uruguay” on SmartphoneMag.com and you’ll find my archived articles, which discuss devices, travel software, and learning Spanish. Here is my latest installment.

Traveling in South America with the HTC TyTN II

For this year’s month-long trip, MobilePlanet loaned me an unlocked HTC TyTN II, which is also sold as the AT&T Tilt (reviewed on page 12). For phone service, I inserted an AT&T SIM card with international roaming privileges. International roaming means I keep my U.S. cell phone number and can call the U.S. directly as well as make local calls. In order to work, I had high-speed Internet installed in our rented house in Pinamar del Sur, which is about twenty-five miles northeast of the capital city of Montevideo.

I’ve now been here two weeks. With fast Internet for e-mail and a U.S. phone number, no one outside our company knows that I am out of the country.

Phone problems

I am functioning well enough here, but the phone has not proven to be reliable in my location. With Exchange push e-mail for my phone, I looked forward to staying connected while taking mini-trips and visiting in-laws.

However, local calling, U.S. calling, Internet browsing, and Exchange syncing has worked intermittently, depending in part on my location and the weather! (Rain seems to clear the air and give me better results.) Rather than going into details, I’ll share some lessons I learned:

• If you want to depend on your mobile phone in your travels, do as much research as you can beforehand. But realize that it may not always be accurate. For example, it’s pretty easy to find both U.S. and international roaming coverage and rates at the AT&T Web site. Unfortunately, as I have experienced, the roaming information may not be accurate.

• Unless you have an unlimited expense account, be careful about roaming charges. From Uruguay it costs about two dollars a minute to call the U.S. and two cents a KB for data usage. I recommend a program like SPB GPRS Monitor so you can track your actual usage.

TIP: If sync fails, click on “View Status” in ActiveSync and search Microsoft’s site for information on the “Support Code” number.

• Troubleshooting can be almost impossible to do with so many variables. For example, why couldn’t I sync the device? Was it a problem with the HTC TyTN II, the SIM card, my location, the weather, a bug in ActiveSync, a problem with our Exchange server, or some combination?

• If you do encounter problems, where do you find support? The best bet is to post challenges on user forums and hope that another user has solved a similar problem.

My impressions of the HTC TyTN II

Wow! The HTC engineers did an incredible job of packing lots of features into a very useable package. Over the years, Microsoft Windows-based mobile devices have evolved from a mini-laptop (Handheld PC), to a PDA (Pocket PC), to its current incarnation as the Windows Mobile smartphone. The TyTN II does a reasonably good job in being all three of those devices in one. The pull-out keyboard and tilting screen make it as typeable as most of the original clamshell Handheld PCs. The built-in software and reasonably large color touch screen make it a fully functional Pocket PC. Finally, the quad-band GSM phone with 3G data capability allows it to function well as a phone. On top of all that, the device comes with a built-in GPS receiver and a 3 megapixel camera!

Using my Bluetooth headphones

First thing each morning, I grab my TyTN II, put on my Plantronics Bluetooth headphones, begin my Spanish Audio course in Windows Media Player, and start running on the beach.